I really like my DSLR (Canon EOS 80d). Especially with the gorgeous Zeiss 50mm/F1.4. And also the other lenses I’m using when traveling are great. But there’s a disadvantage: they’re in sum a bit heavy and need a lot of space. So for any kind of business trip, that’s often too much additional weight which I can’t leverage. But I don’t want to miss the chance of taking pictures when I’m traveling to new cities or countries. There’s the great camera of the iPhone and I can take really great pictures. They’re really good and for the most cases good enough, even for smaller prints (sure, the quality isn’t comparable to pictures with DSLR lenses with bigger sensors etc.). But there’s something missing: the default lenses of the iPhone is sometimes too long in focal length. So I have to create a pano to fulfill the idea of taking the whole scene into one picture.
Exactly at this point the ExoLens wide angle with Zeiss optics (http://exolens.com/discover-zeiss/) comes into the game. ExoLens started a cooperation with to bring the high quality lenses of Zeiss optics to the mobile phones. They’re offering a skeleton (bracket) to put the iPhone into and you can attach the lens on it. The skeleton is really light, the lens is , due to construction of this high quality product, a bit more heavy (as all high quality lenses for cameras are). But it’s not too much that you can’t take it with you the whole day and hold it in the hand for more than one picture. It also gives you a bit of a DSLR feeling. 🙂
The wide angle lens has a focal length of 0.6 (18mm equivalent). This give you a great opportunity to take pictures where you had to use the pano function of the app. And not only is the wide angle great. In addition to that I can’t see any differences at the performance, colors and sharpness. They are great as with the iPhone alone (or even better). So I get a lot more but loose nothing.
I took the ExoLens with me for my business trip to India (Bangalore and Delhi) to have the chance of saving the impressions of this interesting country.
I took a lot of the pictures with the ExoLens, especially when I need the wide angle, which was quite often. The result were great pictures and less usage of the Pano function, I just needed it when I really wanted to make a panorama picture.
For me it’s now the perfect companion for my (business) trips to other cities or countries where I don’t have the chance of taking my DSLR. I can’t imagine not having the great Zeiss lens not on my iPhone. It’s the perfect enhancement for mobile photography.
Here are some impressions.
